Symantec severs ties with Huawei

About five years ago, Symantec joined forces with Chinese communications tech giant Huawei to develop a line of networked storage and security appliances. Now they’ve decided it’s time to move on — a decision that seems to be based on concerns that they may be sleeping with the enemy.

Huawei has been under the microscope for some time. Late last year, the U.S. government decided not to allow Huawei to bid for a new nationwide LTE network for first responders. Two key factors motivated that decision. First, that Huawei’s equipment may be “bugged” by the Chinese government. Second, that the company has strong ties to the People’s Liberation Army.

Thinking that those government concerns might leave Symantec watching from the sidelines back home, the company decided to sell off its stake in the joint venture for around $530 million. Symantec reportedly didn’t want to miss out on the additional information they might have access to in the wake of the U.S. cybersecurity bill. The bill calls for the NSA to share more classified details about cyberthreats with defense contractors and ISPs — information that Symantec needs if they’re to maintain a prominent position in the enterprise security industry.

Officially, Symantec is saying that they accomplished what they’d hoped to when they first teamed up with Huawei in 2007. President Enrique Salem said the venture had been a profitable one and that Symantec now enjoys a much stronger position in China as well as a healthy appliance business. However profitable the partnership might have been, Symantec probably stands to benefit a whole lot more by doing whatever they can to stay close to the NSA.